The BRM in Geneva is over. A summary of the events is posted by Andy Updegrove in his blog. As you might have guessed, the five day meeting failed to properly address the huge amount of comments and proposed dispositions, and a rushed vote on Friday tried to lump together all unresolved issues in a package where the ECMA dispositions were to be voted on without any discussion. Needless to say, that failed miserably. Only ten national delegations voted, and only 4 P-members were for approval. 4 P-members disapproved, a whopping 15 abstained, and 2 even refused to register a vote in protest.

If you count all voting delegates, including those who are not P members, the vote was 6 approvals, 4 disapprovals, 18 abstentions and 4 refusals to vote. Expect this to be announced by Microsoft as a "3 to 2 majority for OOXML approval" in the next few hours. The reality is of course that this is a huge setback for Microsoft. The tricks they have been trying have backfired, and it is now more clear than ever before that OOXML is an immature specification which was totally inappropriate for the fast track procedure.

This means that there is no fully agreed-upon standards text to vote on for the upcoming 30 day ballot to approve or disapprove DIS29500. There are still a great deal of unresolved issues, and the text is half-baked at best. I simply don't see how this could become an ISO/IEC standard in its current form, regardless of the amount of money and marketing spin MS is planning to put into this in the next few weeks.

There are some mixed messages about the subject. The Dutch website Webwereld.nl says that OOXML will probably become a standard, based on the results a guy from their team reported. Is it really over? Or is there room for interpretation?

The formal voting period is 30 days from now, and NBs have that time to decide whether they support DIS29500 becoming ISO29500, but no consensus was reached during the BRM regarding which text to vote on. This is highly irregular, and I don't know what ISO will do. The ballot will now have to be issued for approval of an incomplete and incorrect document, and I see no way for a text which is not finished to be approved. The amount of changes required to make this a proper standard was simply too large for a fast track process. In my opinion, the logical thing to do now would be to recall the vote and send DIS29500 back to ECMA and Microsoft for proper preparation and resubmission, preferably not on fast track this time, but this is for Alex Brown and ISO to decide. I am not that familiar with their directives.

If Microsoft wants to show that it has changed and really wants to improve on openness, as recently claimed, this is the perfect opportunity.

MS should publish rapidly a press release recognising its defeat, and requiring ISO to stop the approval process. Then either resubmit an improved text in the normal ISO process (rather than fast track), or better, announce that they join OASIS to work on improving ODF and making it suitable to be used in the next release of MS Office. This would be a great move that should be recognised as such by the community. The market share of MS will drop, but they will quite surely remain the Number One player for quite some time.

The alternative is that MS try to persuade some NBs to change their vote and to ram the "beast" through the throat of ISO. But this would show very clearly that MS is desperately trying to salvage its monopoly to be able to continue abusing it (and in any case, I'm quite sure they will not succeed). In this case, shame forever on Microsoft… The company would then deserves to disappear from earth once and for all.

**I would like to report irregularity in Egypt as well. I heard that MS asked as much as its partner to join the Egyptian Organization for Standards committee. MS has used those partners to vote Yes without comments and successfully gained majority inside the committee. They imposed the retaining of last Sept Egypt's vote Yes whatever the result of BRM meeting. This is clearly unclean play that MS used in most countries like in Sweden and other countries.

Stegu's comments seem accurate, from a technical prospective, but Microsoft has, unfortunately, mad this into a highly charged political process. Yes, it is clear that — if it is accepted, this 'standard' will be in a highly compromised state, but it is unfortunately very unclear whether or not it will be accepted.

One thing to note it that — at the fall meeting, many delegates gave the proposed standard provisional approval on the presumption that it would be improved upon in this meeting. The rules — as I understand them — allow delegations to change their vote after the BRM. Usually it is only a change from abstain/disapproval to approval but — given how this process has (not) been resolved, it is quite possible that many delegations could decide to modify their 'yes' votes in the aftermath of this process.

If you have any connection with delegations that voted 'yes' earlier, it's probably a good time to get in contact with them.

given how this process has (not) been resolved, it is quite possible that many delegations could decide to modify their 'yes' votes in the aftermath of this process

In my opinion, that is what any honest NB would do: see the obvious stupidity in the attempt to fast track the huge and very badly prepared DIS29500, and recommend the fast track process to be aborted by voting "No". If this issue was not so political, a "no" would be the natural outcome regardless of the disputed technical merits of MSOOXML as such. If there should be such a thing as an ISO sanctioned version of MSOOXML, it should at least be reasonably well prepared and not full of errors and omissions because of a rushed and unfinished standards process.

Contact your NB now and ask them to do the right thing. "No" is the only honorable way out of this mess for ISO. ECMA has no face left to save, but that's another story.